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The Shepherd and the Star - Part XIV
‘This...’ the Commander looked up to the strange emblem as it hung from high up on the wall of the next hallway ‘We’ve seen it before...’ *‘I thought you didn’t want to sit and study?’ the Captain said as he unsealed the next hatch and focused his light through just as the power supply kicked in. The next passage seemed identical to the one they were presently occupying ‘All of these corridors look the same, we’re gonna get lost.’ She was too absorbed in her own reflection through the metal face of the emblem above to listen to his complaints, and then she saw something and immediately tore out of her pistol, leapt back and centred her aim on the radiant object. *‘Whoa, hey!’ he jumped slightly as he noticed ‘What is it?’ *‘-I just...’ she started, and then broke the sentence. *‘What? You just what?’ the Captain came to her side, followed her aim with his weapon and pointed at his own reflection through the symbol *‘Commander, what did you see?’ *‘...Something...there’s something there,’ she stuttered ‘just something there.’ *‘I see us.’ He said carefully ‘What do you see?’ *‘Us.’ She sighed, shook her head faintly and dropped the pistol to one side. He followed her actions. *‘Us?’ he asked. *‘Yeah, just us. I thought, just for a moment, I saw someone else through that thing...’ she told him and felt fairly self-conscious about it ‘I dunno, just...Oh, I dunno.’ *‘Commander, what did you see?’ he pushed ‘Who did you see?’ *‘There was...Just for a moment like I said but, stood right behind me, just this old woman, staring at me, fear in her eyes,’ the Commander hesitated as she glared back up to her reflection through the rounded emblem as it shined above ‘I’ve seen that kind of fear before. It’s the fear of someone who knows that they’re about to die. She had that fear right through her eyes. This is the first time I’ve ever reacted...Y’know, something makes me regret keeping these emotions.’ *‘You got scared? Wait, my heart’s gone louder. I think I’m scared too, a little bit.’ He replied slowly ‘Thanks.’ *‘We can’t stay here, she knows we’re here,’ she finally looked away, closed her eyes and rubbed her temple ‘she knows we’re coming, she’s scared.’ *‘Well the General should be scared. She’s just one agent, we’re two. Maths says that we win. We just pick off her soldiers and-...’ he began. *‘-Not the General. The young girl, you idiot,’ the Commander griped, and then went silent. She opened her eyes, gave the Captain an odd look which he gave right back, and then glanced back up at the emblem. *‘...young girl?’ he said, puzzled. *‘Yeah she’s,’ she mystified herself ‘um, I...I don’t know why I said that.’ *‘Okay,’ the Captain grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her through the hatch before he sealed it shut behind them both ‘you need to take a moment to rest. This entire ship is one big alien vessel, built by aliens for aliens, made from alien machinery. I don’t know what those disk...symbol...things are, but you need to get a grip. We should probably try to avoid them. If we see one, we head the other way. They seem to be able to crawl inside your head and make you...disorientated.’ *‘Captain,’ she threw his hand off her shoulder and stood straight ‘how exactly are we supposed to avoid them?’ She glanced over his shoulder and down this latest hallway, arched just like the last and bearing another corresponding emblem right at the end, above the next hatch. It stared back at them their reflections which made the Captain almost raise his weapon again as he saw it. *‘Okay, this place is freaking me out-...’ he started. *‘-They’re all over the place,’ she finished ‘they’re all over the ship.’ --- A rush of ice coursed up through the girl’s veins as she tapped down onto the floor of this next chamber. She had quickly decided to take back to the ventilation shafts so she could avoid any potential encounters with the intruders, as well as evade the strange technologies that lay across the countless decks of the ancient labyrinth. The air was a lot thicker and frozen in the frame of the ship than it was across the hallways, since the air had to flow throughout each and every chamber. It wasn’t built to passage humans. She felt her teeth quietly rattle against each other as she tightened her body and took many quick steps forward; before she glanced over her shoulder and back up to the shaft she had just exited. The cold air was now flooding out after her, but at least things were calmer than they had been before. After escaping what may have been a deadly encounter with a rogue agent, the girl tore her way back into the shafts and just kept on crawling until she had to stop for breath, so she figured that she was probably on the other side of the ship by now, away from the invaders and alone again. For some reason she preferred it that way. The room was small and dark, a lot like the one she had woke up in she remembered, probably a storage chamber. Like with every chamber she had come to so far, a hatch stood on the wall and waited for her. Just as she approached it she felt herself stop as a slight breeze blew against the back of her neck. Something hummed to life softly behind her as she slowly looked up, suddenly more tolerant to the possible dangers, and saw something begin to glow high on the wall. It was the emblem, the very same design as the one she had seen when she first came to a few hours before. The symbol teemed with strands of light and resonated brightly, yet not maliciously which made quite a change. Her intrusive presence there seemed to rouse it from a deep slumber. Not even slightly intimidated, she turned and faced the weird crest as it shone down on her intensely. She looked and stared, and for the first time saw herself. She was beautiful, and reasonably surprised by just how beautiful. She felt that she was looking at someone else at first, but deep down she knew it had to be her. Her reflection mirrored her dark, wet hair and her wide, curious eyes above her icy blue lips as she tipped her head slightly, strangely as she fought off a distant bewilderment and realised just how vagrant her torn rag truly was as it hung over her unprotected body. It didn’t take her long to realise why she was a lot colder than she ought to be. She glared up again and met her own eyes and they looked back fiercely, and then she saw something else. Just for a moment behind her reflection, she saw two warriors in battle armour both with their pistols held up defensively. The image made her jump at first but her gaze was locked, and she used the moment to study them. They were intruders too, like the others she had seen, but they seemed different somehow. She felt a different set of intentions flow into her mind from them, before she blinked and they disappeared. She sighed, aware somehow that their image would fade as soon as she looked away. The emblem did not seem as strange anymore, and as its light lit up the rest of the room she noticed various crates and items stacked up atop one another. She had seen objects piled in a similar fashion since her awakening, each under layers of dust which suggested that many of them had yet to be opened. She looked away and towards the hatch, and then noticed a plate of letters printed above it. She had seen similar symbols all over the place, and somehow the more lights activated the more she was able to read the content, as if the knowledge to do so was slowly being imprinted onto her brain. The sign read ‘Rassilonian Storage C’, so she guessed that the other chambers like this had to be ‘A’ or ‘B’. She considered it an odd coincidence that her sporadic sense of direction had kept leading her into storage compartments, but shrugged it off and approached the latest hatch. --- The General examined the frail knife as the two soldiers scanned the bones as they lay motionless; she then turned her attention to the slit in the old dead computer as the lights began to stammer again. *‘The power systems seem to be fluctuating a lot around here,’ one of the soldiers said to the other ‘I mean everywhere we go, the lights keep turning on and off.’ *‘Well it’s clear that this ship is really old, I mean look at these. These bones have been rotting for a really long time,’ the other snapped and carelessly tossed one of the bones back at the pile ‘I wonder what killed them?’ *‘I think whatever killed them was only recently deactivated. This machine has been forced offline just before we came in,’ the General broke into their conversation ‘how does that make you feel?’ *‘...The Commander?’ the soldier guessed ‘she probably needed to get past, but how did she get here before us?’ *‘I don’t think she did,’ she said as she tucked the knife in her belt and stood ‘I don’t think the Commander has been here yet, which means that there is someone else here.’ *‘So that someone must have murdered the others?’ he presumed and nodded to the other ‘they must be strong, alien.’ *‘Either way, it knows we’re here,’ she said with a strange stillness to her tone ‘I wonder if it thinks we’re a threat?’ *‘If that thing killed the others, then we better be!’ the soldier declared, pulled out his pistol and checked the bullets ‘I don’t intend on dying here.’ *‘Does anyone really ever intend on dying?’ the General sighed ‘Death can just happen, and most of the time it happens very, very fast so perhaps you should treasure the notion. If you’re really scared of dying then you wouldn’t have come here.’ *‘I’m not scared of dying, but that doesn’t mean I want to die,’ he argued ‘if I die I’ll miss out on the revolution. I’ll miss out on being a hero.’ The General turned and looked down to the pile of ancient corpses as the soldiers readied to explore the next room. *‘Y’know, back in the olden days they believed that the human soul would rise up out of the body after they died and go to a place better than life,’ she enlightened them ‘it was called heaven. The primitive societies of Earth believed that the decent humans would ascend to heaven after death, and the not so decent humans would descend to another place, a place of constant torment and agony. Now, I think of all of those I killed under the Agency and I wonder...Where am I going?’ *‘What’s your point, General?’ the soldier asked plainly. *‘Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?’ the other followed. *‘Well this ship is from somewhere other than Earth, somewhere far off across the dark of the universe, and look at it. It’s structure, its walls, floors...More than enough proof that there is far more to the universe than the UA know about. It is discoveries such as these which write history and shape the ideologies of the future. There’s more going on in the universe that we could ever conceive of,’ she said as her stare wandered ‘so maybe the patrons of the Rapture were right.’ *‘The UA could have you killed for just saying that,’ the soldier reminded her as the other nodded in agreement ‘It’s social blasphemy.’ *‘Well why not? Why is the idea of heaven and hell so offensive now? It’s offensive because it implies that the human race is far more important than it actually is, it suggests that we’re being watched and guided and tested by something else. It proposes that the UA’s entire moral constitution is based on where we want to travel to when we die, but of course no one would ever accept that now, especially since the Rapture was a consequence of faith against logic’ she added ‘but my point? My point is that we know now, just because of this ship’s existence – we know that there is more to the universe. We know that just about anything could be out there. Even God-...’ *‘-Enough! I won’t hear anymore!’ the soldier bellowed ‘Alright? No more, please!’ *‘Can we just get back to the mission? This is all just too much right now.’ The other pleaded. *‘Of course, silly me.’ The General cleared her throat and rolled her eyes ‘Forgive me for believing that you were both open-minded. Let’s go.' As the two soldiers chose to ignore the General's thought process and hurry onward towards the next hatch, she glanced away and up one of the walls. Just under the ceiling sat a large spiralled metal emblem, she noticed her reflection in it for a moment before she turned and followed them. in Part XV